1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing system and printer that enable particular data created by a particular type of application program to be printed by a particular type of printer while preventing particular data created by other application programs from being printed by the particular type of printer and preventing particular data created by the particular type of application program from being printed by other types of printers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital pens that digitize handwritten information entered on printed media such as application forms and medical records are commercially available. A special pen developed by Anoto AB in Sweden, for example, has a miniature camera mounted near its tip that detects a proprietary dot pattern printed on a sheet of paper, thereby tracing the movement of the pen as it writes text or diagrams or makes marks. The trace data are stored in the pen and transmitted to an appropriate information processing apparatus, which converts the written information to a useful form in an electronic file or database, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,548,768 to Pettersson et al.
Tools such as the Anoto Form Design Tool, which functions within the Adobe Acrobat software system, are used to incorporate the proprietary dot pattern into print data. Anoto Form Design Tool reads original document data from a file in a portable document format (PDF), adds the dot pattern, and generates a PostScript file as Anoto electronic form data. The PostScript file is then sent to a printer with an Anoto-qualified PostScript interpreter, which prints the PostScript file to create a paper form that can be used with an Anoto digital pen.
The Anoto electronic form data generated by the Anoto Form Design Tool, however, constitute an ordinary PostScript file, which will be printed out automatically even by a printer having a PostScript interpreter that is not Anoto-qualified. In many cases, the result is a printed form that cannot be recognized by the digital pen.